In the related art, there has heretofore been known a hybrid drive apparatus in which a distributing mechanism allows an output of an engine to be distributed to a first electric motor and an output member connected to drive wheels, whereby the first electric motor is caused to charge a battery during a running of a vehicle, propelled by the engine, which is also propelled to run with a second electric motor acting as a drive-force source. For instance, Patent Publication 1 (Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 9-170533) discloses such a hybrid drive apparatus. With a control device for such a hybrid drive apparatus, the first electric motor operates to rotatably drive the engine via the distributing mechanism such that the engine is started up.
Besides, other technologies have heretofore been known as disclosed in Patent Publication 2 (Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-264762) and Patent Publication 3 (Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2000-238555).
At present, even for the engine driven with, for instance, gasoline, bio fuel or the like may be used as other fuel than gasoline. Therefore, a research and development work has been required to provide a vehicle addressing various issues arising from a plurality of types of fuels. Further, the types of fuel supplied to the engine are different from each other, and fuels have different properties in volatile or the like, causing fluctuation to take place in startability of the engine. For instance, ethanol has a lower volatile than that of gasoline with a resultant difficulty of achieving an explosion. Thus, it has been known that using an ethanol blend fuel with ethanol being mixed to gasoline at a certain mixing ratio may degrade startability of the engine.
Such degradation in startability of the engine is remarkably present especially whether the engine operates in a cold area. If degradation occurs in startability of the engine arising from the fuel type in use, a need arises to address the various issues. To this end, a time period for rotatably driving the engine is extended, or a rotation speed of the engine is promptly caused to increase for startup of the engine. This immediately increases temperature of fuel compressed and expanded in the engine, to a level available to initiate an ignition, thereby suppressing occurrence of degradation in startability of the engine.
However, no control device for the hybrid drive apparatus, disclosed in Patent Publication 1 mentioned above, has been developed in consideration of the fuel type being altered. Thus, no alteration has been made on a control to start up the engine depending on the fuel type in use when starting up the engine. Accordingly, when starting up the engine with such a control device, degradation may conceivably occur in startability of the engine when the fuel type supplied to the engine is altered.